Soul Source: Back and There Again

by Charles Vella

  The car stopped, again, in front of the inner gate that led to the Magellan offices. Magellan was tucked into a corner of the campus with its own wall and sophisticated electronics that made the ones protecting the university look stone-aged. After all, they weren't just protecting the lives of students here. They were protecting the project. The inner gate was closed, even during the day. Monica sipped her coffee and drummed her fingers idly on the dash while she watched the outline of the above-ground part of the MITCo building sitting ominously through the trees a hundred yards away. Waiting.

  The guard sauntered out and over to where her window was sliding down.

  "Morning Monica."

  "Hi Tim." Any time today Tim. No hurry. Not like some of us have to actually get to work.

  "How're you?" Tim held the retinal scanner out for Monica to look into. Did that really add any protection over projecting your own retinal scanner? Ted evidently thought so but who knew?

  "Fine. Thanks. Running a little late."

  "Well then," he said with no visible movement. "Better get going then."

  She smiled, Tim's, "tell Sarah I'm going to have to report her," mercifully cut off by the rising window.

  Finally. She thought the smile was going to crack her face but the gate gave a little jolt and started moving. Tim stared down at her and smiled and she smiled back as it trundled, trundled, trundled to the end of its motion and stopped. For a second she was afraid the car wouldn't move because he was too close but she sighed with relief as she felt the gentle tug of forward motion. He stood on the other side of the closing gate, staring after her.

  "Lonely."

  "I'm sorry Monica. I didn't catch that. Could you repeat it?"

  "Nothing. Nothing," she snapped and clamped her mouth shut. For God's sake. What kind of world is it where you can't talk to yourself without having to explain to the inanimate objects around you?

  The car pulled past the half empty parking lot. They pulled up to the entrance of the building and stopped. The door slid open.

  "We have arrived at our destination Monica."

  "It's not our destination," she said as she slid around to get out. "I'm not spending my day in the parking lot." Although maybe that'd be an improvement.

  "I'm sorry Monica. I didn't catch that. Could you repeat it?"

  "Charging station," she added as she stepped out of the door.

  "Battery power currently reads twenty-five point three percent," the voice said. That voice. With all the options they offered you'd think they'd give you more choice of voices. She'd had to pick between her mother and some guy with his hands jammed into the pockets of a raincoat watching a playground. A week of him and she'd've been wearing a parka to work every day. But the price they wanted for more voice options? It was ridiculous. She wasn't about to be forced into throwing money away like that. "It really isn't necessary to charge at this time."

  "I don't want to wait until it's out of ... why am I explaining myself to the car I'm the owner for Chrissake."

  "I'm sorry Monica. I didn't catch that. Could you repeat it?"

  "Charging station."

  "The risk of insufficient power given the location of charging stations in this vicinity is less than five percent," her mother said in the same voice she'd used to explain why Monica shouldn't eat so many rolls before dinner.

  "I don't want to have to stop lat...Aaaagh." Two months she'd owned this thing. She wouldn't make it another two. It was the voice. It triggered some primal instinct in her to argue. She'd almost told he guy at the dealership that when she'd tried to get it disconnected, but he was already looking at her as if she were crazy and she'd managed to stop herself.

  "I'm sorry Monica. I didn't catch that. Could you repeat it?"

  "Charging station," she snapped. She got out, grabbed the edge of the door with both hands and slid it shut as hard as she could.

  "The door is self-closing," the muffled voice admonished as she walked away. What'll it do next? Contact the manufacturer? Complain about this crazy woman who kept charging it when it didn't need to be charged? Request a new owner? Call her mother? 'You won't believe what she did today.'

  "Serves you right," she called over her shoulder. "And Frankie Morano's parents weren't home after homecoming. I lied."

  "Good morning Monica."

  Her head whirled around. "Oh. Phil. Hi."

  "Having, er, car problems?"

  "No," she forced a laugh. Haha. No crazy people here. How much of that performance had he heard anyway? Thank God he was an accountant and not in marketing. The fact that the Team One lead was a lunatic would be whispered over desktops instead of ending up on the MITCo web site. "Just talking to myself."

  He nodded. Smiled weakly. Sure. Happens to me all the time. He slowed to put his eye against the retinal scanner. She did the same. "Please wait for..."...Aaagh..."the door to close," the mechanical voice lectured. She took a deep breath, waited until the door closed behind Phil, placed her eye against the scanner again, and passed through the opening door.

  "Thank you for your patience," the mechanical voice called sarcastically after her.

  "You're welcome," she snapped. Caught up to Phil, looking at her with increasing discomfort. They walked toward the circular elevator bank and escalator snaking forty feet upward around it like a boa constrictor until they both disappeared into level zero above the atrium. The guard looked up and smiled over his desk, framed by the huge aquarium, the only aquarium with a title Monica'd ever heard of. Deep Pacific. It took up the entire back wall of the atrium, a huge upside down cone that bowed into the atrium as if the building'd been built around a giant teepee. The water somehow always dark, almost black. If you stood and focused you could see some strange things in there. Not unlike the rest of the building. The other three atrium walls were forty feet of tinted glass that got darker as the sun got lighter, bathing the atrium in a kind of perpetual late afternoon.

  "Morning Monica. Phil."

  She waved a hand over her shoulder and Phil nodded. She projected a screen onto her wrist. "Damn." Almost nine. Have to go directly to the meeting. Still, she placed her eye against the retinal scanner and the clear door to the escalator swished open. The elevator was faster but she saw Phil turning to wait at the door for her and couldn't face the thirty seconds of him looking at her and wondering if she was cracking up from the pressure of time travel or just crazy. She trotted down the steps as they traced their slow circling motion around the bank of elevators like the water circling a toilet, ignoring the disembodied voice intoning, "Please do not walk on the escalator," checked her screen, got to the level three. She stepped off and the door swished open.

  "I've been looking everywhere for you."

  She stopped and turned toward the voice when it hit her.

  "You." Kenny backed up a step with his hands in front of him as she strode at him behind her pointing finger. "If I find out you had anything to do with getting that skirt raised after I tried it on I'm going to have outfitting sew a pair on you so I can cut them off."

  "Now now," Kenny chuckled nervously. Backed up another step. "Just a little joke among colleagues. You need to stay calm. They're waiting for you in Pruitt's office."

  She stopped with the tip of her fingernail within striking distance of Kenny's skinny chest. "Pruitt's office? Why Pruitt's office?"

  Kenny felt the initiative shift and glanced around conspiratorially. He lowered his voice. "Better hurry. They're waiting." He raised his eyebrows theatrically. "Pruitt and Artie are there."

  "Pruitt? And Artie? At a debrief?" She turned and stared toward the escalator, her arm dropping back to her side, deflated. That's how bad a debrief could be. Facing Pruitt would be bad enough. But there weren't too many reasons for Artie to be there and none of them were good. She turned back to Kenny. "I don't see why..." But she did see why. She saw why with a clarity that made her stomach hurt. Doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out these clues. S
he tried not to feel like the body in the parlor with a knife in its back. If you don't know who the victim in the murder mystery's going to be, better raise your life insurance.

  "Pruitt doesn't need a why," Kenny said, hurrying past any lingering questions of what he and Les might or might not've done to her skirt after a couple, well maybe a few, beers at Hazel's. Anyway it was ancient history at this point. Why keep dredging it up? "Ours is not to question..."

  "Alright, alright," she snapped. "Spare me the geek philosophy. If it's Pruitt's office then it's Pruitt's office. What difference does it make?"

  "Beats me."

  "Thanks." She turned. She opened her eye to the scanner and the door swished open. She headed for the escalator going up, fighting off images of prisoners banging tin cups against bars as she climbed. "And..." she called over her shoulder before the door closed. "I haven't forgotten about that skirt."

  "Neither have I. If you need to be comforted later," he took a step back when she looked as if she might come back down the escalator and added hastily, "you know where I'll be."

  "In your dreams."

  "They're great dreams though," he called as the door swished closed behind her.

  Monica shook her head and smiled in spite of herself, but the smile disappeared at the thought of sitting through the debriefing in Pruitt's office. Standing through it, she reminded herself. You didn't sit in Pruitt's conference room. Someone had once told her that Pruitt hadn't sat down since nineteen ninety-six, when he was ten years old. She imagined him as a boy, standing in the back of the class. Reciting the part of the school rules that didn't specify kids needed to sit in their seats to the teacher. He even had a custom car with a standing restraint system. Did he stand when he slept? Like a horse? He must lie down sometimes if half of what people said about him were true. Maybe that's what she'd do. Try to imagine him naked. No. If half of what people said about him were true that'd only make him more frightening.

  "Please do not walk on the escalator."

  "I'm not walking. I'm running," she muttered. The escalator swirled its way back up the clear tube through the atrium to level zero. She stepped off and walked down the hall and stopped in front of the closed door and stared at the brass nameplate. Pruitt Root. Chief Logician. She looked up and down the hall. No one around. Was it too late to run away? She shook off the thought. She wasn't in middle school. And this wasn't the principal's office. Yeah. Right.

  How could this day get any worse?

  "Hello Monica."

  Monica recognized that purr with a sinking stomach. It was the sound a cat made as it contemplated a cornered mouse. Where'd she come from? The hall'd been empty a second ago.

  "Good morning Veronica," she said through a bright smile. "How nice to run into you."

  "Visiting Pruitt?" Veronica stopped and glanced from Monica to the closed door. She wouldn't be so bad if she weren't so damn perfect. Perfect body, face, teeth. Monica'd looked at Veronica's hair from every angle and couldn't convince herself it wasn't really blonde, which made her almost as mad as wondering whether Veronica had implants. No she hadn't looked at those from every angle but they were too... they didn't...and she was Monica's age. Almost. "How nice," Veronica purred. The corner of her full red lips flickered up.

  "Debriefing," Monica said, her fake bonhomie sputtered away like a balloon with a pinhole. Why did she let the woman do it to her?

  "In Pruitt's office?" Veronica lifted two wafer thin eyebrows in the cultured surprise of an actress who'd just been told the butler did it. "And I thought I saw Artie going in there too. Well, well Monica," she extended a perfectly manicured set of talons and touched Monica's arm. The cold radiating from her fingertips and gripping at Monica's heart had to be imagination, but the shudder was real enough. "I wouldn't worry about it. I'm sure it will be fine."

  Monica stopped and took a few deep breaths, eyes glued on the shapely figure swaying down the hall in spite of herself, breathing over and over, "no place to hide a body on this floor, no place to hide a body on this floor".

  Michelle glanced up as the door slid open and Monica walked in. Monica thought she caught a flicker of sympathy before Michelle'd dropped her eyes back to the screen projected on her desk. Michelle was the best admin assistant in the building, so it was hard to fault Pruitt because she was also a former runway model. Beautiful, competent women seemed drawn to Pruitt like moths to a flame. A lot of them ended up burned, if half of what Monica'd heard about Pruitt were true.

  "They're in the conference room," she said, then raised her eyes again and gave Monica a tiny smile of encouragement. A half-inflated life preserver in a raging sea. Monica smiled back and clutched it to her chest.

  The door to the left of Michelle's desk slid open. Most of the executives had open doorways leading to their outer offices and often to the inner offices. But all doors leading to Pruitt were closed. Except for the conference table the room was empty from the curtained floor-to-ceiling windows at one end to the stark white wall at the other. The table was a huge thing, about eighteen inches higher than a normal table and no chairs. How big is it? What did you say? It could stand twelve? So much light poured from the ceiling lights and reflected off the polished surface of the table and the white walls that Monica had to take a second to let her eyes adjust.

  Artie, Eileen, and Verma looked over as she came in. Artie beamed, Eileen looked uncomfortable, and Verma bared his teeth in what they'd taught him was a warm smile in security guard school or wherever it was he'd gone to learn to be a jerk. Monica's stomach sank even further. Not just HR. Security too. She hadn't really had any lingering hopes that this might be a normal debrief, so why did the weight of reality dropping on her head as she stood in the doorway almost knock her down? The only other person in the room was Pruitt. Pruitt didn't turn. Didn't fidget. Pruitt never did anything that wasn't intentional. He stood at the window, staring through a narrow slit in the curtains out across the campus, like an actor waiting for his cue. 'When Monica enters stage left Pruitt, you turn, stick the knife in her, and twist counter-clockwise.'

  "Come in Monica, come in," Artie said. Artie was already shifting his bulk from one foot to another. He'd rebelled once and brought a chair into Pruitt's conference room and had spent the meeting straining to keep his eyes above the table. He'd looked like a fish peeking its head above water. He'd never found out who'd taken the photo that'd spread like wildfire around MITCo. People were careful not to let the head of HR in on things like that. There'd even been an informal contest to put a caption to the picture. The winner, 'Can I sit at the adult table this year?' had popped up as the background on every screen in the company. It could still be seen in corners of the building that Artie didn't frequent. He'd never brought a chair again.

  "I'm surprised to see you here Artie," Monica said. "Am I being fired?"

  "Such a clown," Artie chuckled. Monica always imagined Artie as head of HR in the middle ages, lifting his axe, smiling benignly as she was tied to the chopping block. 'It's not about the execution Monica. It's about the relationship.'

  Eileen looked over from where she stood across the table from Artie. Monica tried to read a message in her eyes, but they didn't add anything to the, "thanks for joining us Monica," that came out of her mouth before she looked away.

  Monica looked around. "Where's Sarah?"

  "Come in Monica," Artie repeated, and she realized she was still standing in the doorway. "We have a lot to discuss."

  "Where's Sarah?" she repeated. I can keep asking until someone says something. But she stepped around the table and stood next to Eileen, whose hands were pressed on the table in front of her as if she had to resist the urge to reach over and take Monica's hand. Somehow that didn't make Monica feel better.

  "Sarah's not here," Artie said.

  "I can see that," she said. She was already talking through her teeth. It didn't help knowing that's exactly what Artie wanted. Angry people are easy to handle. They manag
e to be wrong even when they're right.

  "Yes, yes," Artie chuckled. "I suppose you can." He looked around but his inane smile died away when no one else joined in the fun. "Well then," he cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows as he peered at the screen in front of him. "Down to business then?"

  Monica could feel the blood surge to her face. "Where is she?" She looked over at Eileen, who couldn't hold her eyes.

  "We thought it best to meet with you alone given the, ah, unusual circumstances described in your report," Artie said with an encouraging smile. You wouldn't believe the candy I have in my car little girl. Get in and see.

  "So this isn't really a debrief. It's a firing squad."

  "Now Monica," Artie chided.

  "A firing squad," Verma snorted. Even standing you could only see Verma's head and neck above the table, as if someone'd stood a bust with an ink black pompadour and pencil thin moustache on the table. Memory had to supply the physique that he spent hours in the company gym cultivating and the rolling walk he'd picked up from old westerns. A lot of lunch time discussion centered on whether Pruitt didn't look at Verma more than he didn't look at other people. He wasn't looking at Verma now, but Verma was looking at Monica. No doubt thinking about all the times he'd asked her out and savoring the moment.

  "Get on with it," Pruitt told the window.

  "Yes, yes, of course, of course. Yes," Artie beamed at the back of Pruitt's head, then turned and shined his plastic smile on Monica. "Yes. Well. We've decided Monica," Artie said, emphasizing the we, "...that given the facts of your report..." He cleared his throat and Monica shuddered as her report was projected on the wall. Artie absently tapped the table with a finger, looked around for support. Pruitt stared out the window, Eileen stared at Monica with a pained expression. Verma grimaced, lifted himself up and down on his toes, and watched Monica with what he probably thought were bedroom eyes. "Well, as I said..."